Chapter 85: Chapter 79 – New City, New Problems

The moment all direct rays of harsh light from the sun disappeared from the horizon, I turned myself invisible and grew my wings before checking on the little fluffballs. I wasn't entirely sure, but it felt like a few of them might have gone off somewhere. In exchange, I was pretty sure that there were a few new ones floating around, but considering the lack of distinct features of the lesser spirits meant that aside from their type, it was really hard to tell them apart.

I wasn't really confident that I was actually doing so and was simply imagining it.

But after confirming that they were ready, I took off. As it was still early in the night, I skimmed low to the ground to avoid any rays beaming over any extended horizon, but even if I came close to anyone, it wasn't like they could see me without the skill [Spirit Perception] or [Mana Perception]. Even if they did, they wouldn't be able to differentiate me from any ghost or spirit without a high rank of them anyways.

Flapping my wings, I soared through the air, enjoying the feeling of the ambient mana flowing over my body. A quick glance behind me confirmed that the fluffballs were keeping up, so I maintained that speed.

As I flew south, angled slightly east so that I would intersect with the road I had detoured off of so I could take my long awaited bath, I enjoyed the little bit of extra freedom I gained from unfettering myself from the ground. Throwing in a few extra flaps, I sped up while weaving back and forth as I dipped one wing then the other, just barely touching the tips of the tall grass below me, yet keeping my overall velocity low enough that the fluffballs didn't struggle to keep up.

It didn't take long before the dirt road I was looking for passed underneath, so I sharply turned to follow it south.

As the night deepened, I comparatively raised my altitude as if an invisible ceiling was being lifted. Or rather, in a sense that was exactly what was happening. Having my wings scorched by the sun like Icarus wasn't exactly something I looked forward to.

But as I was allowed to part further with the ground, I gained the space needed to start fooling around, and that was exactly what I did. From barrel rolls to rolling scissors to loops and vipers, I played around in the air like a bird after being grounded for days.

In reality it was only for half a day, but my estimate for the time it would take to reach the next city meant that I would have to kill some time one way or another anyways, and these manoeuvres didn't slow me down much anyways.

After a while, I found the fork Peitho had mentioned, and followed it south west. On occasion I passed by groups resting on the roadside. Many had little fires going, but I ignored all of them. They didn't even trigger any idle curiosity from me.

Hours later, I noticed that the groups camping out suddenly increased. Most of them were spaced out, but some seemed to group up together, sometimes even cutting open some space in the grass and making a circle with their wagons carriages, a campfire in the middle lightening up the interior and the shadows of those tending them looking like the spokes of wheels.

Once I passed the strange sight, the number of groups camping out decreased once again.

It didn't take long after that before I could see the walls of a city in the distance.

I wasn't too sure at first due to the distance, but as I got closer it quickly got clear that the walls of this city was quite different from any I have seen before.

In the first place, they were massive. Probably half as much taller than Knossos's, which were already pretty impressive. The tops of the walls also sported fully fledged battlements, and the sheer number of lights, magical ones that shone phosphorescently white at that, were staggering. The security of this city was more like something I'd expect from a fortress.

Those lights hurt my eyes a little even from this distance, so rather than flying all the way and finding some conveniently close and tall bundle of grass, I decided to call it quits and instead land further away to avoid having to expose myself further to those light aspected lamps.

When I landed, I let flow a bit of my mana into the ground and churned it up, flipping the topsoil to bury the tall grass then packing it in hard enough that as little of it as possible would rub off onto my newly cleaned clothes.

"It's a bit later than usual, but here you guys go."

Sitting down on the packed earth, I produced and through around a whole bunch of mana treats for all the spirits around me, and extra large one for Claret like usual of course.

"Thank you Master!"

And with those words she dug into the baseball sized crystallization of mana. All around me the little balls of soft light danced around as the caught the airborne treats and dug in, following their greater brethren's lead.

As for me, I went back to the air and went to grab a meal for myself. Very quickly I found a charge boar laying all by itself in the fields. The tall grass didn't do anything to obscure its sight from above, and with a quick dive, I broke its neck with a light kick and transitioned to fully enjoying the crimson goodness that lay within. I bit through the monster's thick hide as if it was the shell of a chocolate egg and I sucked up its delicious innards.

But all too soon the warm vitals ran out, but at least I had managed to fill myself quite well on the beast.

Returning to where I had left the group of spirits, I landed then lay on my back to have a look at the stars above. The view of so many stars glittering so brightly still did wonders for my spirit. Earth was so covered in light pollution that trying to see the stars at night was a challenge all on its own, let alone seeing a starry sky outside of my computer monitor. Just like flying, I didn't think that I would ever get bored of them.

Eventually though, as bright and deep as the starry sky of this world was, it was only a matter of time before light pollution worked its way over here as well.

The deep blackness marked with bright spots eventually got chased away by indigo, then red, then blue. Eventually I was forced to avert my eyes from the almost painful brightness as the sun wormed its way over the horizon.

Pulling my hood down, I forced myself up from that comfortable position on the ground and patted my cloak down before making my way to the packed earth road. On one side, the tall walls of the next city was clear even from this distance, and I started my way over to them on foot.

 

Making my way on foot, it didn't take too long before I was at the city's gates. Just the its walls, the gates were quite impressive. Large, heavy wooden doors reinforced with steel, bones, and scales. It looked like it could easily take a battering ram, and was large enough that four wagons could go through simultaneously.

Thankfully I didn't have to wait to enter the city. There wasn't any line at the gates for entering, though quite a lot of people were exiting. Most of them appeared to be merchants and adventurers. The guard quickly let me through after I passed him my guild card, and I took my first steps into a new city.

As I made my way through the gates, the tunnel that went through the outer walls were quite a bit thicker than at Knossos. They stood almost twice as thick and there were clear recessions for two porticulli along the way in addition to another reinforced gate at the far side. There were little holes dotted around the ceiling as well, but as for what they were for I had no idea. I wasn't even sure if they were unique here, or I had simply not noticed them at the other cities due to me being more interested in what lay beyond the gates rather than the gates and the walls themselves.

But what lay beyond these gates weren't something as nice as what I found in the previous cities.

Sure, they were bustling and full of people, but there was a gloom that hung in the air. Something that I couldn't tell specifically any more than that. It was like people were forcing themselves to move or something despite some sort of oppressive atmosphere. A forced march that had been going on for quite a while or something.

It was hard to tell at a glance if it was simply a difference in culture or something had happened, but simply standing around in the middle of the street wasn't going to give me any answers, so I forced my feet to move.

After asking around a little, I found myself at the city's adventurers' guild branch.

Between the previous branches I had visited, this one most resembled the one at Knossos, but the full stone construction gave it an even sturdier feel than any other I had seen. Many of the buildings were made of stone here, though the number of structures with only the first floor being made of stone wasn't few at all. I hadn't spotted a single one that didn't at least have that much.

To be honest, I didn't have that good of a feeling, but if I dropped this opportunity, I didn't know if I'd ever have another chance. At the very least, it would probably be a bad idea to leave home until I've managed to raise my level further and figure out a few countermeasures to the worst I could imagine happening to me.

(Or something. It's not like I can actually think of how the next assassin might come, presuming that they even will.)

Regardless, while I can likely out wait any assassins as long as they weren't also vampires or spirits, making Alicia wait that long before she could gain the freedom she deserved wasn't something I was willing to do, even if she herself would have been.

Suppressing my thoughts, I opened the heavy doors to the guild building.

The inside was quite a lot more familiar than the outside of the building. While little details were different, the layout and features were mostly the same. Thankfully there weren't many people around at this time so I was able to step up to a receptionist without having to wait.

"Welcome to the Eremus Adventurers' Guild. How may I help you?"

A slightly gruff looking man greeted me. Unlike my previous experiences, there weren't any pretty ladies manning the counters here. This man was stoutly built, with bulges clearly visible under his uniform around his chest and biceps. He wore his dirty brown hair short, and thick stubble lined his cheeks and square jaw as if he hadn't shaved in a better part of a week. His uniform though was well put and clean looking at least.

I didn't know whether to consider him to be dressed professionally or not, but at least he had a certain degree of pride or responsibility.

"Ah, umm, I was told that there may be someone knowledgeable near this city?"

"Knowledgeable? You mean about the monsters in this area or something? Or maybe the demons?"

"Ah, not quite, maybe?"

(Were vampires considered a type of demons?)

"Ah, I do have this though?"

To preempt any trouble, I handed the man the sealed scroll I received from Peitho. I doubted that I'd easily be able to talk to an expert on vampires since I was a nobody. Doing so without borrowing some strength wasn't very likely considering my time constraints.

"This is...!"

The man froze when he saw the wax seal on the scroll I gave him.

"Please wait a moment!"

Bolting out of his seat, the receptionist hurriedly dashed through the rear door, and the sounds of his footsteps pounded their way up the stairs in four sets before going down a hallway and the faint sound of some pounding came.

A little while later, the receptionist returned from the rear doors, this time a bit more composed.

"The guild master will like to talk to you. Please follow me."

With a nod, I did as he asked and the two of us made our way to the third floor, down the hall, and I was let in to an office.

The room was a little messy with various specimens of all sorts laying around on the desk, decorating the shelves along the far wall, and some even hung off of the other walls. But calling them specimens felt overly generous. To my eyes, they all looked like junk. Not even worth the effort of salvaging to make anything useful or pretty out of.

Behind the desk was a tall, slender man. His uniform was smartly kept, but in the few places where the material was worn enough to conform to his figure suggested that he was well built underneath. What little of his features I could see were well chiselled, but unfortunately almost half of his face was blocked by what looked like a pair of glasses.

Unlike any glasses I was familiar with, the lenses were small and cloudy, only the size of a large coin. And instead of a thin plastic or metal frame, the frame appeared to be made of thick wood that rose up to meet at the forehead with a hinge, allowing the glasses to stay on his face by pinching his nose.

(But can he really see with such things? They're so cloudy and distorted that no matter how bad his eyesight might be, it's probably better than wearing those things.)

"Ah, sorry. Sit down and gimme a sec to finish reading this."

The tall man waved a hand at the seat in front of the desk before returning to play with his glasses with one hand while holding an unfurled sheet of parchment with the other. It was clear that he was having trouble reading the words written down as he kept flicking one lens on and off of his eye.

After a minute of this, it seemed like he had gotten fed up and just put the eyeglasses down and started to read the letter like normal.

(Huh? He doesn't actually need those?!)

Looking a bit more closely, while it was difficult to tell, I couldn't see any traces of magnification on the lenses. They seemed to be entirely flat and void of any curvature in either direction.

"Sorry about that, Scarlet is it?"

"That's right."

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I suppressed any comments and questions I had at the moment and did my best to stay professional.

"Lets see, apparently you come with the guild master of Knossos's full recommendation is it?"

I wasn't quite aware that the letter actually came from the guild master, though I did suspect that Peitho might have merely written it in his name rather than him having any active part of its construction.

But since it was a convenient thing, I simply nodded.

"So, what is it you need then? Says here you came to find something?"

The fact that it says even that said quite a lot about how much Peitho either predicted or guided my actions recently.

"I heard that there's an expert on vampires near here."

"An expert? On those things? I dunno about that. Anything like that would be buried in the royal library in the capital or something."

The guild master's words were far from encouraging. It was starting to look like my trip was going to be entirely a waste.

"Huh? Wait, gimme a sec."

It looked like the man had noticed that there was a second page to the letter. As I had little reason to examine it, I wasn't aware of such a thing either.

"Hmm...while I don't know about an expert, now that I think about it, there might be someone who knows something."

This man's words were quite suspicious, but it was hard to ignore any leads if it meant that they had a chance of bearing fruit pretty soon.

"What do you mean?"

"Ah, well, it seems to be, that is, I heard, that there might be someone who knows a bit about vampires near here."

"Really? Right after you just said there's no such thing?"

"Ah, well, there's no expert, but that doesn't mean that there's nobody who knows at least something, right?"

(I thought I was the one asking the questions here?)

"And...?"

The bad feeling I had gotten earlier had come back in full force, but I couldn't falter this easily. A chance was a chance after all.

"Well, here's the thing. We're actually in a bit of trouble here, so if you can help deal with that, I can give you the chance to meet the person."

"...What sort of trouble?"

"The people of a village to the west had disappeared. We were in the middle of putting together a group to investigate, but how about you join them?"

"...I'm not very good at working with others."

"Well, how about you treat this like practice? At the worst, you can just work independently and report what you find to the team leader?"

I didn't like it that much, but it didn't seem very hard at least. The question was what was hiding beyond the request outline.

"And of course we'll pay you properly for your work. You're looking for information about vampires right? I can have a talk with the lord and maybe he'll have something useful in his private library? If not, maybe he knows someone who can give you the information you want?"

"...Tell me more about what's going on."

I felt like I had just swallowed a fishing hook in its entirety, but the chance was too good to refuse without at least finding out more.

"The thing is, we've been having some trouble with bandits for a little while now. They target travellers and traders in the area, but we've never been able to figure out where their base was. All the known caves and other likely hiding places have been combed through a bunch of times, but we got nothing."

Just so he didn't feel like I wasn't paying attention, I gave the guild master a little nod.

"While we're not 100% sure yet, we think they were the ones behind it. Its only been a few days since we got the info from a merchant that visited said village, but we've been trying to put together a large expedition just in case."

"Isn't that an overblown response?"

Frankly, I didn't see how if they were starting off with just an investigation, why they'd need more than a single party to do the job.

"The reasons are twofold. The first is that we want the investigation team to handle any rescue if its possible. The second is that this bandit group that's to blame, they were strong enough to attack a village, we'd need all the high level adventurers we can get."

This was sounding more and more of a pain.

But despite that, I was having trouble just turning my back on these guys, and it wasn't because of the promise of reward.

"What are the chances that there are survivors?"

"Surprisingly, pretty good. At the very least, the merchant had the guts to have a bit of a look around and apparently he didn't see any bodies at all. While I doubt that there weren't any casualties at all, I think that most of the people were taken somewhere. And while we haven't been able to find their base up to now, there's no way that they can completely hide the tracks of so many people."

That was a reasonable assumption. If anything, this was the best chance to finally deal with this bandit group that's been harassing this region for so long.

But that aside...

"Why would they kidnap an entire village though?"

"..."

The way the guild master looked down at his desk suggested that I wouldn't like the answer at all.

"If it was only a few people, then I could understand slavery or something, but a village is just too many."

"...The only answer I can think of...is some sort of dark ritual."

"Huh?"

That was quite a fantastical answer, even for a fantasy world like this.

"I think they're going to be sacrificed for the sake of some sort of dark ritual. What kind I have no idea, but I can't think of any other reason."

His words made me clench my teeth and dig my claws into my thighs. The very idea of human sacrifices, or whatever the term was over here, made bile rise up in my throat in revulsion. While my disdain for death cults veered more towards the people who join and are influenced by them, people who are sacrificed for the sake of crazy cults and strange rituals tend to be completely innocent. The idea that an entire village was been taken for the sake of some sort of insane ritualistic sacrifice filled me with abhorrence.

"But...these are bandits, right?"

After taking in a few deep breaths, I managed to calm myself enough to squeeze out those words.

Bandits and dark cultists weren't quite the same thing, even if they were both groups that terrorized populations, it was strange for one to suddenly turn into the other.

"I can only think that there was some sort of cultist seeds somewhere. Whenever they attacked any travellers, while the men were killed on the spot, the women had always disappeared. We just presumed that they were made into slaves for their own use or sold on the black market, but we haven't been able to prove anything. Though, strangely enough, they laid low while the last demon war happened. It was a godsend to us, since taking on invaders from the dark continent while dealing with such a powerful bandit group would've strained everything we had."

My expression tightened up as the man spoke. His gestures lightened up and for some reason he even laughed a little at the end. Such a thing really must've been a relief to him.

"Ah, you don't know? The gap to the dark continent is shorter here than almost anywhere else aside from the land bridge to the south. Anything that can fly tends to attack over here rather than around Themiscyra. That's why this city is so well fortified. Normally we just evacuate all the villages west of here while the war is going on then send them back when its over. Having the population of an entire village disappearing though is pretty unprecedented for us."

It seemed like he read my expression and answered my question for me.

The more I hear about the dark continent, the more curious I become of it, but this wasn't the time to ask about that.

"I see."

This sounded like it was nothing but trouble. Completely out of proportions to the rewards that I could get.

I wanted to refuse it, completely.

But...

"...haaa....fine. I'll do it."

I might have been duped into doing this, but my conscience wouldn't let me just ignore so many innocents. Not when it seemed like I could make serious contributions towards saving them.

 

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